[X-Istence]

This has worked well for me personally. My dad and I have the same name, and I share a fairly common name for Dutch people. My name is Bert Regeer, but I always go by Bert JW Regeer. In conversation I am still Bert, but everywhere else I am Bert JW. This solves a lot of problems.

People no longer get me confused with my dad or some guy working for Shell, when I sign up for mail or anything along those lines it has my middle initials in the first name field (unless they have a special field for middle initials) and I don't have issues with my dad and I sharing a name (If we travel together, sometimes the airline will cancel the ticket because they believe it is a double booking ... makes it really fun when we both go to check-in).

Best of all, I now rank really high for Bert JW Regeer. As in, almost everything on the first through third page are exclusively me (may change depending on location) on Google. That makes it fairly easy to find me.

[patrickambron]

This is a really good idea (we encourage users to do it). If you have too common a name, use a middle initial. The trick is, you need to use that name in prof. setting (biz card, resume, etc) otherwise people will still Google the other name, and they won't find you

[X-Istence]

Indeed, my middle initial is on everything. Business cards, it is in my domain name (bertjwregeer.com), it is used in email, everything.

[X-Istence]

Since "billpatrianakos" asked me a question that is related (and it seems his comment is [dead]), let me clarify and state that "JW" is actually my middle initials.